Nokia Alpha, Phi, PurePhi and PureLambda pop up in tests, bring Windows Phone 8 along for the ride

Not long after the Lumia 900 surfaced, Nokia's Windows Phone roadmap appeared to have come screeching to a halt -- official and otherwise. However, the first signs of Nokia's second wave may have just surfaced in WP Bench's testing leaderboards. The Nokia Alpha, Phi, PurePhi and PureLambda have all shown up at varying points in the chart; we've seen them for ourselves, although you'll need WP Bench on a Windows Phone to see them first-hand. Not much is visible without seeing the devices themselves, but the PureLambda appears to be running a build of OS 8.0 -- better known to most as Apollo, or possibly Windows Phone 8. As long as these aren't elaborate pranks, they could represent entry, mid-tier and high-end phones; we're wondering if...

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Playsurface touchscreen computing table hands-on (video)

Let's be honest -- the first time we saw the Microsoft Surface in action, we all dreamt of getting our grubby fingers on our very own unit. Five years later, we're no closer to the dream of a touchscreen coffee tablet in every living room. Templeman Automation, thankfully, shares that dream. Earlier this month, we caught word of the company's Playsurface, a Kickstarter project aimed at bringing low cost touchscreen computing to the tabletops of eager early adopters who just can't quite justify the $8,000 price tag on Microsoft's similarly named product. We were excited at the prospect of finally getting to play with the product when TechCrunch opened up the gates to the hardware portion of its Disrupt conference. Unfortunately, as we...

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